How do we navigate the turbulent waters of church polarization and foster unity? Join me, Margie Bryce, along with Michael Bischoff from Soul Leader Resources, as we tackle this pressing issue on the Crabby Pastor podcast.
With more denominations than you can count, the church is more divided than ever. We reflect on Jesus’ prayer for oneness in John 17, and consider how societal instincts to identify enemies contribute to further fractures. Election seasons and post-COVID tensions have only heightened these divides, but there are new approaches pastors can take to foster a more unified community.
Michael and I explore how to manage the dynamics at play while fostering a relationship with God that transcends fear.
We also take a deep look at recognizing authoritarian and narcissistic leadership within the church. Identifying traits such as the use of fear, the creation of in-groups and out-groups, and the suppression of dissent that can help pastors self-reflect and avoid these pitfalls. Michael shares valuable resources for further understanding, and we emphasize the importance of inclusivity and holistic spiritual formation. Additionally, we address the critical issue of burnout among ministry leaders, offering tools and advice for self-assessment and recovery. Don’t become the “Crabby Pastor”—listen in for insights on maintaining healthy self-care practices and fostering a thriving church community.
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Transcript
Margie: 0:01
Hey there, it’s Margie Bryce, your host of the Crabby Pastor podcast, where we talk about all things sustainability, whether it’s sustainability in ministry, in your personal life and we acknowledge that the church is in a transitional time, so we hit topics there, too that are going to stretch your mind and the way you lead, especially how you lead yourself, so that you don’t become the crabby pastor. And it’s Margie Bryce with the Crabby Pastor podcast, here with you today, and I think we’re going to get divisive. No, I don’t know, maybe you just have to listen and decide for yourself. I’m here with Michael Bischoff, with Soul Leader, and we’re going to talk about this crazy era in which we find ourselves. I always like to refer to any election season as that silly season. Some people take offense at that, but I do have a spiritual gift that you should be aware of, and that’s the ability to offend everybody in the room, regardless of which way they lean on any particular issue at the same time. I really think that’s some kind of spiritual gift.
Michael: 1:21
That’s awesome.Margie: 1:22
Yeah, isn’t it? It’s just kind of like my disclaimer now, so I’m going to annoy you. You know, what I mean, right? So, michael, you’ve been here with us before, but please take a moment to reintroduce yourself and tell us how you serve the church.
Michael: 1:40
Yeah, thanks.
Michael: 1:42
I just want to chime in here because one of my mentors used to say you’re going to need to forgive me by what I don’t mean by what I say, because else we’re stepping on toes all the time, right, and people assume we mean something when we often don’t.
Michael: 1:55
And yeah, my name is Michael Bischoff. I am the founder and kind of lead consultant and coach with Soul Leader Resources, an organization I founded 24 years ago, and I did that because, after being in pastoral ministry many years, I pastored for 30 years in total and also did Soul Leader at the same time but I just found there were so many issues that pastors and leaders and missionaries and denominations and seminary students were struggling with and I wanted to be able to come alongside and see if I could offer some help. That seemed to be really a gift that God had given me was to come alongside leaders and encourage them, and I’ve been doing that for 24 years at Soul Leader and even some years before that, and still get to hang out with a whole bunch of churches and even do some interim pastoring in them at times and absolutely love being able to bring encouragement to leaders.
Margie: 2:52
Well, thank you so much for being willing to chat again, and I know we had talked about a list of things the first time you were on and this topic of well, we kind of have lumped a few things together here. But the divisive time that we’re in, the polarity that we seem to experience, and whether it’s an election, whatever the topic is, and how can we help pastors to think a little differently about this, to help them push through and persevere through these times? I mean even because the topics you gave me are kind of post-COVID related, but some of this was really rampant in the COVID era. You know, all you had to do was either show up with or without a mask somewhere.Margie: 3:48
And it just people got really wicky about the whole thing and I sort of understand. I mean, I had friends telling me that they were wearing a mask and for heaven’s sakes, you never know whether somebody has had a double lung transplant the month before. You just don’t know. But people would come up behind them and one of my friends in particular does have a serious autoimmune thing and people would come up behind them and kind of cough at them. These are people not wearing a mask. And I thought, well, that’s just.
Margie: 4:23
I mean these are people not wearing a mask and I thought, well, that’s just. I mean, what do we have to say about people?
Michael: 4:29
Right, right, well, yeah, it makes me think if we go all the way back to scripture, to John 17, right In the high priestly prayer and Jesus prays the Lord that they may be one as we are one, and there’s this wonderful, beautiful prayer for unity. And then you think of the church from that time on post Jesus, first century, second century and it’s not long before the groups just start to divide. And I don’t know what it is currently, but every year the handbook on denominations comes out and it’s somewhere above 40,000 different denominations. So we’ve split it apart pretty good and we’ve not done a very good job at being one. So you know, throughout all of time I think we’ve always struggled with unity.
Seeing things the same way, we want to be different and we like to disagree with others and even sometimes make the other an enemy. Recently I heard someone saying that if you study I think it’s sociology from a tribalism perspective, that in order to protect the tribe you always need an enemy. And that makes me realize much of what has happened in the church is sometimes identifying what we think is the enemy that’s going to harm us, destroy us, lead others astray, and so much of our energy is just put into that, making that person the other or the enemy, or assuming they’re against us, rather than starting from a place of unity, like I think Jesus wanted us to do in John 17. So I kind of smile right when we even think about COVID, because while it did get worse during COVID right the polarization, if we want to just call it something many of our churches had a good sense of unity prior to that. We’ll just talk about our individual local churches because we know denominations have split over time over so many issues. It’s not even funny.
Margie: 6:25
No, I got stuck. I got stuck back at your thing about the handbook of denominations. There’s a handbook of denominations.
Michael: 6:33
Oh yeah, and it’s published every year. I don’t know if it’s still as it used to be, but every year it would come out. Why? Because there’s probably a couple thousand more and so yeah, so, but if we focused even on our own church, it did seem to be easier in a post-pandemic era to find unity, at least in our church, and that’s not always the case. But we kind of tolerated people who were different than us, or at least we knew there were people with different political views and some had maybe even different doctrinal views, and they saw things differently. We just seemed to have more acceptance for each other. And then something happened in the midst of the pandemic, and I think there are some root causes to that, and we can talk about some of those that created in the average local church greater polarization than most leaders had ever seen, or definitely what most leaders felt equipped to deal with, and that created this problem
.Margie: 7:26
Yeah, and it does get to the place and the point with some people where you’re unsure how much you should or could say with them and I think that that puts up barriers to relationship, which is that’s sad.
Michael: 7:49
It is. Yeah, it is sad Because, right, you have people on one side that are trying to be sensitive and do the most loving thing toward those around us was thinking that we’re living out that biblical mandate to love our neighbor as ourself and be cautious and careful, and sometimes that meant putting a mask on or getting a vaccination or whatever, or not meeting. And then you have those that don’t really want to be told what to do. It’s not that they are trying to be unloving, but maybe the greater value comes along in independence and not having government or anybody really tell you what to do. So freedom is important to them.
Michael: 8:28
And now you’ve got the makings of what polarization is looking for, right, differences of opinion like that, and it just I think it was the perfect breeding ground for polarization to happen.
Michael: 8:42
And you throw into that to certain types of leaders that realize that if you came at things in a well, maybe a more authoritarian way, that others would then flock to that, because they wanted someone to tell them what to do or probably a better way to say it, they needed someone to calm their anxiety.
Michael: 9:02
And there’s been sociological studies that have been done that I think are pretty fascinating. There’s a Canadian psychologist and professor named Bob Altemeier who, in a book he wrote, called the Authoritarians, and he writes that when there are high levels of anxiety and stress, somewhere in the neighborhood of 30% of the population are attracted to authoritarian leaders who calm their anxiety. So now again we have the makings for polarization, because those that really feel the need for their anxiety to be calmed are going to look for a certain type of leader that’s going to speak with authority or strength or truthfulness or, you know, not compromise. They’re just looking for that. And many churches grew who had that type of leader, or I’m going to even say certain leaders chose to become that kind of leader, realizing that they could see growth with that tactic.
Margie: 9:59
And you know, this gets really kind of weirdly interesting, because I was at a training Enneagram training and it was with Suzanne Stabile, and the topic was asked which one of the numbers is the most prevalent in the culture? And actually it’s a six and these people are, and she said it was more than 50%. And I thought, what Are you kidding me? And so then, because I come from a marketing, communications and an advertising background before ministry, I started thinking, oh my gosh, this is why you see advertising the way it is. You know, hurry and get this or you’re going to miss out, or it’s just definitely fear based because it goes at that. And then if you throw in things like freed men and family systems theory and you look at people’s anxiety and how well they are able to calm themselves or not calm themselves, you know it’s easier just to have somebody take care of that for you. And Friedman would probably say we’re a society in regression right now. Anyway, that things, that this is just the way things are headed right now, where people are challenged. And you would think because I think it’s reasonable to consider that perhaps church would be a place to go to have your anxieties and your fear.
Michael: 11:37
Yeah.
Margie: 11:38
Not so much dealt with. I don’t want to say dealt with. Dealt with, I don’t want to say they it is. It would be an outlet for you to sit for a minute and really put things into proper perspective with your relationship with God.
Margie: 11:56
And who do I really think? But quite often we don’t stop long enough to do that kind of work in terms of fear. But so then the next best thing is, if I don’t want to manage myself, handle myself properly, I’m going to look for somebody to do it for me. And I was always told that any good pastor is not going to let you try to ride their coattails to heaven, but any good pastor is going to push you to a relationship with Christ.Michael: 12:30
Yeah, yeah, that’s good. You know it’s sad because you know I’ve heard many times that the number one command in scripture, or the command used more times than any other I’ve never done this study to see if it is, but I assume that it is is fear not or do not fear, right. Scripture tells us to not fear and yet we tend to live in such an environment of fear and that’s really something I did see in both the pandemic world we lived in and in the post-pandemic world. Still there’s a much higher degree of fear. I hear that in the kinds of sermons and messages that are being preached, because we work with a lot of churches, a lot of pastors, so I’m trying to listen for what’s out there. I hear it even in the way that worship is led and the things that worship leaders might say are those that are praying from the front Like what I need.
Margie: 13:19
some examples here of this.
Michael: 13:21
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, I must not go to a church that does this, but Well, that’s probably a good thing that you don’t right.
Michael: 13:28
But it’s easy when you get up in front of people. It’s easy to kind of play into that fear by somehow making what’s out there seem more fearful than it really is. And that’s what I hear kind of in prayers often is oh God, it’s so bad out there, right, it’s so scary. We have so much to face and we don’t know if we’re going to be able to do it. And we need you to rise up and conquer it all, rather than to realize that if the kingdom of God is active and living around us, that’s a perfectly safe place to be. That was a quote that Dallas Willard used to say when he’d talk about the divine conspiracy. He would just literally say and it’s the one he got the most pushback on. Actually that he would say is that living in the kingdom of God is a perfectly safe place to be.
Michael: 14:19
Yet that doesn’t work well if you want people to live in fear and when you realize that if you create and increase their fear, they might need you more, they might need your church more, they might give more money to your church or they might believe what you say or follow you.
Michael: 14:38
So again, this is the way. Maybe an authoritarian leader might use fear as a real or concocted enemy to help people follow more strongly, and that’s not helpful because that increases the polarization right. And then I think one of the things I see many pastors come to me and in our coaching or in our relationships or training or whatever they’re saying, they don’t know what to do with all the people in their church that come to them and are asking them to preach on topics, or to preach on certain topics with a different kind of authority than they typically do. Why? Because the people are fearful and they want their pastor to more boldly speak about certain things that didn’t happen to the extent four, five, six years ago that we see it happening today. And now many people not only ask for it, but there’s a little bit of an agenda, even that Pastor, if you’re not going to do this.
Michael: 15:37
A little bit of an agenda, even that pastor, if you’re not going to do this, I’m going to go down the street to the church that is doing this, once again creating polarization, because if certain kind of people leave and they go to a certain kind of church that’s down the street with a certain kind of leader saying a certain kind of thing, now what that leaves behind is a different kind of person that’s willing to stay at that church. See so even the kinds of churches that we see have different constituencies with less diversity in them because of this polarization.
Margie: 16:05
Well, that’s disturbing.
Michael: 16:07
It is. On a number of levels.
Margie: 16:10
And I remember pastoring in my first church and one of the congregants did come to me and just kind of made a casual observation and said, pastor, you don’t preach on any of the social issues. And I said well, you know, I will when we get to the place where people understand what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. I said because there’s people who have been in church more than 20 years and if you ask them to describe what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, you know you hear like the crickets chirping. And I said, and I find that very, very disturbing. So, you know, when you got to the end of your sermon, sermon and you’re going to give the, here’s what it looks like because of all the rest of the stuff I already just said to you, here’s what it looks like to be a disciple. In response to that, you know, then that would be the picture that I would paint. And I thought, you know, if we were to really understand what it means to be disciples, I think a lot of conversations would look differently. I mean, I don’t project to say how or anything.
Margie: 17:25
One of my seminary professors did say that the church in North America is in a crisis of immaturity. Crisis of immaturity and I thought, well, you’re my new best friend just for saying that. Because I thought, how is it? You’ve been to church that long and you don’t understand some of the real basics of the Christian faith? Instead, it becomes more about social principles and I’m actually starting to see and I don’t know if this is connected to the election cycle or season that we’re about to start or are in, or something that people are saying, well, I’m not going to get into, that’s a cultural issue and I’m not going to get into that. And I thought, oh my goodness, I’ve never, ever, heard those words fall out of people’s mouths. It’s rather shocking.
Michael: 18:20
Yeah.
Margie: 18:21
I don’t know if that’s going to stem the tide with some of the divisiveness I mean it’s rampant on social media and here’s where they go on social media Unless you believe as a Christian in the same way that I think about being a Christian, then you’re not a Christian. And even Christ said you can’t say to another person I think it’s Raca R-A-C-A, meaning the Margie Bryce translation of that word is good for nothing. You can’t say somebody’s not good for anything, right, no use for you. Um, so it really calls us to really examine some things it does how do you know you, I am sitting under.
Margie: 19:07
I’ll know I’m sitting under an authoritarian leader when you have any kind of oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s a good way to ask for it. So then, pastors could say am I this? I don’t know.
Michael: 19:21
Yeah, no, I think it’s worth our study. I know this can be exhausting for pastors that are already trying to shepherd their church and teach and lead. But to dive into a topic that really none of us have ever been equipped to study, that feels really exhausting. So I get that from the front. I’ve been even tell to study. That feels really exhausting. So I get that from the front. I’ve been even tell me that how hard it is. But I have found to at least get minimally educated.
Michael: 19:43
You know that book by Bob Altemeier that I mentioned. You can Google his name and I think it’s even free as an online download. Another book Brian McLaren wrote a book called the Second Pandemic and authoritarianism in your, your Future and that’s a real cheap or I don’t know if it’s free or real cheap on his website, but I found that just a real good summary. That was helpful to me in understanding some things, because he pointed out even some things like that. Authoritarian leaders are characterized by the first thing we talked about already fear. They know how to use fear for their own ends or create divisions with an in-group and an out-group. So if you see a leader doing that and almost like creating people pointing fingers that those people are in the out-group, definitely ridiculing them. Well, we might not see that in the church quite as much you do to a certain extent, but we definitely see that in the political realm Name-calling, finger-pointing, really unkind comments being said. So look for things like that.
Michael: 20:43
Distorting or distracting from the truth is another characteristic. That’s very common Intentional misinformation, if you sense a leader is giving information but your gut is saying really I’m not sure if that’s true, or maybe you fact check it, because we can all do that pretty quickly now by uh, you know, just our phones right in our lap. We might be listening to someone and we can fact check that pretty quickly. Or the suppression of dissent is another characteristic. Um, if someone questions their behavior, that leader’s behavior an authoritarian leader doesn’t want to be questioned, so they’re going to try to put down that dissent. There’s not an ability for people to have different opinions in that environment.
Michael: 21:28
But I think the church is a place where people from all kinds of opinions can come and share. Again, polarization makes everything about either or it’s either this way or that way, and this way is right, or you, which is usually our way, and that way is wrong, which is their way, so you better choose our way. But it’s not about either or it’s about both end, and I think looking at the gospel you realize, kind of like you were saying earlier, margie, the gospel is a more of a both end gospel, where it’s not about exclusivity or exclusion. It literally is about Jesus, who was inclusive of everyone. I mean, that’s my favorite definition for the kingdom of God, it’s the availability for all people, that heaven’s available for everyone, and I think that’s a beautiful way to be able to look at it and to understand the gospel.
Michael: 22:21
I think if you go look in Mark 1 15, you’ll see Jesus describing the gospel as the availability of the kingdom of God for everyone. Well, to me that’s a very inclusive thing. So, just by its very nature, polarization excludes and chooses a side and creates fear and distorts truth and creates division and calls names and oh right, that’s a problem of discipleship. You did say it well, we are incredibly immature. Another way would be our formation, our spiritual formation, or what I like to call our holistic formation, is badly lacking and we really need to address it at that level.
Margie: 23:00
Sure, and as you were going down your list of many things there, I was wondering this looks like a list of how to know you’re in a cult. And then I wondered, as you’re speaking, I’m wondering is this like narcissism too thrown in? And definitely it’s a big stew and you just stir it all up and it just doesn’t make anything.
Michael: 23:26
Yeah, I would say not every narcissistic leader is an authoritarian leader, but probably most authoritarian leaders are narcissistic leaders, if I were to say it kind of in one way that I see so and there’s some good books that have been written on that. Um, I help churches that have either had to recover from leaders with degrees of narcissism or whatever the case. So you can actually google that. Chuck de gro’s written a really good book on that. Poles is an author also who has written a good book on that subject, on narcissistic pastors. So if you sense any of that, if you’re well one, if you are a leader, first we got to take the log out of our own eyes. I’ve had to do this many times and look for my own narcissism right, my own tendency to use other people for my own ends in order to validate myself, and and, and sometimes we were trained to do that. I know I was trained to be a narcissistic leader, so it really starts with us.
Margie: 24:28
You were trained you think you were trained to be in a.
Michael: 24:30
I was trained Not. Yeah, not consciously. Yeah, I didn’t take narcissism one-on-one.
Michael: 24:37
I would just say in my early years of leadership development and in seminary, as well as just even the church that I was a part of, so many leaders were very highly narcissistic and the way they trained young leaders and the way they trained young leaders, I think, drew out those things in them, including me. And I didn’t know that until I left that church and then was in my first full-time ministry experience and then crashed and burned in eight months of clinical depression, which I think is a story I told when I was on your podcast before, so people can go back and listen to that podcast if they’re interested in hearing that story. But that caused me to realize my own narcissism. So I think, like Jesus said, take the log out of your own eye. We have to start with ourselves. Become more self-aware, be reflective to see. Am I creating some of the polarization? Am I causing some of these problems? So leaders need to do that definitely and to watch others in the church that have influence that might do that. That helps us be good shepherds, because I think we have more people potentially in our churches creating polarization as well.
Michael: 25:44
But then the other level obviously is just those sitting in the pew, if you will, the lay people of the church, those that attend, for you, if you’re one of those folks, to be highly aware of the leaders that you submit yourselves to and that you realize that there are a lot, a lot of leaders in the Christian church with high degrees of narcissism, and it’s a sad reality, but the statistics have shown it to be true.Michael: 26:10
It’s why we have a lot of division in churches and a lot of problems. It’s one of the things I’ve committed my ministry to doing is helping churches get healthy and recover from things like that, and it’s sad but it’s true. It’s part of the human condition and so knowing what to do about it is extremely important. But I do think so. I’m glad you brought it up because, yeah, the narcissistic element in leadership definitely contributes to polarization and what happens there, and it doesn’t mean they might not grow a great church, because I think some of the biggest churches in existence have been grown that way by highly narcissistic leaders, and that’s true of companies as well. Narcissistic leaders make great leaders to grow things big, but I don’t think they’re leading in the way of Jesus and they leave a wake behind them.
Margie: 27:00
And bigger isn’t always better.
Michael: 27:10
No, no, I know that flies in the face of a lot in North America right, right, right, especially Texas.
Margie: 27:12
No, you know I’m not. You know I’m the state of Texas here. But I think what was sad for me, having served in the ranks of the United Methodist Church, is I had a congregation that was mixed. I had people that would come to me and we’d have conversation and I could tell from their conversation that they perceived that I was well safe to talk to and they were more conservative leaning. And then I would have people come to me who are more liberal leaning and I they felt very comfortable and safe to talk to me and they could they assume that I was more liberal, leading too, you know. And I thought, well, isn’t this kind of interesting here that they don’t seem to know for sure? And that was by design on my part, because I’m pastor over everybody that was there and I was busy banging the discipleship drum.
Margie: 28:14
This is what it was to be a disciple was busy banging the discipleship drum.Margie: 28:18
This is what it was to be a disciple.Margie: 28:20
The sad thing is was that I knew there was coming a moment when you would have to pick a side, a or B, and I was incredibly sad for the congregations that were mixed, that they were going to be the ones that would struggle the most, and sad because they had figured out how to do life together and it was okay.Margie: 28:42
You know, and I thought I’m sure Jesus is crying in a corner somewhere. You know, over things like that, over how we kind of stumble over ourselves and undermine and and all that kind of thing. I know for me ourselves and undermine and all that kind of thing. I know for me, now that I’m not in pastoral ministry, I’m pretty picky about the kind of leader that I want to let have influence over me and I’ve been blessed that I’ve been in places where there is an aspect of humility that is not flashed around like it’s a badge of honor or something, but just very subtly. You can just pick up that there, that this is a person that has gotten understanding of humility and and kind of naturally exudes it.
Michael: 29:33
Right.
Margie: 29:34
But again, you know we don’t see that in the political realm Right anywhere and I understand you do have to have a bit of an ego to say that I’m going to stand up here and say stuff to all y’all. There is that piece of it, but at the same token, as leaders who are following after God’s purposes. There still has to be that understanding that I’m up here over all y’all, but I am under the influence of the Lord, God most high.
Michael: 30:08
Right, right.
Margie: 30:10
Oh, that’s. That’s an ideal, maybe, I don’t know.
Michael: 30:15
Yeah, yeah, no, it’s so true, I mean, and we see it so clearly in the political realm as you were talking. It just made me think. You know, in our country we’re really poor at choosing something that’s in the middle. We’re better at going oh, I don’t like this way. We’ve been governed for four years or eight years or whatever. So I’m going to swing to the other side, or let’s bring in that kind of leader, and then we go back and forth from pole to pole. Right, there’s very little in the middle, we don’t have a strong third party government, and so that’s the way our political system just works, and that’s why it’s just so extreme in the way that goes back and forth, rather than trying to find a more moderate approach to many of the issues. That would be much healthier if we were able to find that happy middle. But in churches I think church leaders can definitely make that choice we can seek what’s sometimes being called now the courageous middle, right? Because if there are poles and we’ve seen stream polarization what does it look like to find the courageous middle and live in that space, rather than being either or, like I said earlier, for it to be both and, and that’s challenging. It definitely has its challenges, but I think it is such a good goal to be able to look and see how to, rather than choosing an extreme view on this or that.
Michael: 31:39
How can I actually talk about all sides in a way that shows where the wisdom really lies and maybe what God’s wisdom is in that, or allow people then to have the freedom to choose what their leaning might be and then to help people coexist together with some different views? I even find it funny that churches you know have such a strong or long doctrinal statement. Right, here’s our belief statement, doctrinal statement, and they post that on the website. It’s often one of their first pages on their website and I thought you know I’m not sure how healthy that is, because what that says is then, unless you believe every you know jot and tittle of this doctrinal statement, you’re not welcome here.
Michael: 32:25
Do you really want to say that some churches do?
Michael: 32:27
I get it, but how different could it be if you just simplified it down to something like the teaching of Jesus and the apostles? Or you know that we believe that the kingdom of God is a very broad and inclusive space, like I was talking about earlier, when Jesus defines the gospel in Mark 1 and 15. What if we were to say that and then allow differences to coexist without contention, so that people don’t call each other names, raka, like human or whatever right? But we tried to cultivate a spirit of openness, humility, listening, you know, a good active listening, question, asking, sitting with attention, being able to have discussion, learn from each other. One phrase I’ve seen used more recently now by some churches that are trying to do this is a third way, that, rather than it having to be that way or that way, we’re going to identify as a third way space that realizes we’re going to have people on that side and we’re going to have people on that side, and I think that’s a really good way to look at it.
Margie: 33:32
So yeah, or we could just call it via media.
Michael: 33:36
Yeah, the via media right.
Margie: 33:38
They did that in England right when they couldn’t say Catholic or Protestant. Let’s have a middle way here.
Michael: 33:43
And.
Margie: 33:44
I think that’s the history of the Church of England maybe. Yeah, yeah, I don’t know where that’s looking at you know, I’m sure this is a heretical discussion somewhere.
Michael: 33:54
I’m sure it is.
Margie: 33:56
Somebody’s going to say well, this is heretical, but I just, you know, after you spend a lot of time, you don’t even have to spend a lot, because I don’t spend a lot of time just snippets here and there on social media. I just think, oh, come on people, can’t we do a little better than this? And I don’t know whether they think that people think that they’re talking to a homogeneous group or because nobody’s mind has changed on social media, really.Margie: 34:25
Yeah know, I don’t I don’t know anybody that says this mean change my life even though that’s a big thing to say in the culture.Michael: 34:33
This is changing life, you know right seriously.Margie: 34:36
Your dish soap change your life I know we’re going to be a telling culture, right?Michael: 34:40
we have opinions and we want to tell others our opinions. And pastors often ask me, or the leaders I coach, like, how do I approach this? And probably the thing I say more than any other is learn to ask good questions, and that’s what we, as coaches, learn, right, you learn to ask good questions. So I think all leaders, all pastors, need to learn to become question askers. So if you want a place to start, rather than feel like you have to create your own opinion on everything or study every issue or come across authoritatively on whatever the case would be, learn to ask questions. We have a good example of that in Jesus, right?
Michael: 35:17
Jesus, when asked questions, would often respond with another question, or he was just the master question asker, and yet we don’t pay much attention to that. Maybe we all need to get into our Bibles and do a study on the way Jesus asked questions, why he asked them that way and the results that came out as a result. So if we were to start somewhere, I think, to ease polarization, learn to ask good questions that help people sit in the tension and not feel like they have to exert their opinion in a way that edges other people out so that they’re only around people that agree with them. That’s just not what community is. Right henry now, and used to say that community is the place where the person that you least want to live with always lives. That means there’s disagreement, there’s tension, it’s messy right and, pastors, we need to cultivate that with each other.
Margie: 36:12
Yeah, I know, and in my last church I served in the new, and that was before I was trained as a coach, but I was before. I was a newspaper reporter and some of the marketing and PR work required me to ask questions of people I was interviewing. So I had to ask the right kind of questions to get them talking, to get information, to understand better. So that was part of what I was packaged with already. So they knew that if they came to me with something, I it was going to be a really why do you think that? Tell me more about this or that. I mean, I was always and, and look what I’m doing now and now it is. You know, I coaching is a great outlet for that and it and it’s a helpful and useful tool. It’s good to be curious about other people and why they think the way they do, because there’s usually something that’s usually kind of an interesting story besides yes right people are kind of interesting.
Margie: 37:12
Well, I’m going to leave us here and just you know, I think this is the kind of podcast that you just listen to maybe a few times share with a friend, and just kind of listen to maybe a few times share with a friend and just kind of mull over where you think Jesus might fit. And I’m not saying Jesus fits, and everything comes out of my mouth and no way would I say that.
Margie: 37:32
There are some days I tell you, don’t even follow me to the grocery store you so you know, I mean take a moment and just kind of chew on the ideas and think about it and see what God says. Thanks so much for this conversation, michael, and I’m sure we’ll have you back on again.
Michael: 37:56
You’re welcome. Thanks, Margie.
Margie: 38:02
So how do the pieces of your life fit together? Do they fit together well and things are humming along just fine, or are there some pieces that are tight or absent or just not fitting the bill? This is your invitation to join me in my glass workshop for a video series, where I am going to do a stained glass project while I talk to you about sustainability and building sustainability into your heart and into your life. So I am going to be doing my art, which is a form of self-care, and I’m going to invite you into that space with me and I’m going to chat. I’m going to chat about self-care and I’m going to show you how I create, and there’s a nifty, nifty analogy Stained glass seems to be a very good metaphor for what I want to talk about. So I’d love for you to join me. To do that, to opt in, I’ll need you to email me at crabbypastor at gmailcom. That’s crabbypastor at gmailcom. So you won’t want to miss this. So you won’t want to miss this. You definitely won’t want to miss this. So make a plan to join me in the glass workshop.
Margie: 39:46
Are you wondering whether your fatigue, your lack of motivation, your lack of interest is burnout? Maybe? I just wanted to let you know that I have a resource on the website, margiebryce dot com that’s B-R-Y-C-E MargieBryce dot com and it is a burnout questionnaire free for you to download, and kind of self-assess and get a sense of where you’re at. There are questions that not only ask about what you’re going through but maybe how often you’re experiencing it and that’s kind of a key to where you might be, because you have to know where you are in order to chart a course forward. And most pastors who experience pastors and ministry leaders who experience burnout rarely know that that’s where they’re at until they’re well into it. And if you’re unsure about that little statistic, so far, everybody that I’ve interviewed on this podcast who has experienced burnout, when I ask that kind of question, they’re like, yeah, I didn’t know that’s where I was at. So again, go to MargieBryce dot com it’s on the homepage of the website and you can get your burnout questionnaire and kind of see where you’re at.
Margie: 41:07
Hey friends, the Crabby Pastor podcast is sponsored by Bryce Art Glass and you can find that on Facebook. I make stained glass as part of my self-care and also by Bryce Coaching, where I coach ministry leaders and business leaders, and so the funds that I generate from coaching and from making stained glass is what is supporting this podcast and I will have opportunities for you to be a part of sponsoring me and, as always, you can do the buy me a cup of coffee thing in the show notes. But I will have some other ways that you can be a part of getting the word out about the importance of healthy self-care for ministry leaders. So I’m here to help. I stepped back from past honor and, in all things, make sure you connect to these sustainability practices you know, so that you don’t become the Crabby Pastor. Thank you.
